User blog:Semerone/Struggles and friendships

Yesterday, I told you a bit about how my seventh birthday and how I got my SNES back in 1998 and how I first encountered the Kishin Douji Zenki series in 2003.

I also told you, how worried I am about Azure's latest behaviour and hope, that she doesn't take yesterday's blog the wrong way. I deeply care about her as a friend and don't want to lose her again!

Today, I am going to tell you about the great struggles in my life, because I encountered some people back in the past, that thought, that all the things I achieved were a given, as in me being "born with a silver spoon in my mouth".

This isn't true though.

So, here I am telling you about the darker hours of my life.

My childhood
Back when I was still a little child, everything seemed nice and cheerful at first. I had many friends and we were getting along well.

But as time went on, the other children started picking on others. I was one of the children, that stood up strong to protect the weak, but this got me right into the crossfire between bullies and their victims and I got bullied myself.

While I never let the bullies get through to my heart, I lost many friends to them and other children that had been close to me betrayed me and stole from me.

I soon was very lonely. This only got worse when some of my remaining friends moved away due to family related reasons.

In the end, I only had two friends left.

They were very shy and couldn't stand up for themselves, but they were there for me when I got sick or hurt.

I was even bullied by my mother sometimes, who hit me for no reason. That was until I was big and strong enough to defend myself against her, then she left me alone, but I still remember how unfairly treated I felt.

My teen years
It wasn't until my teen years, that I found out, that the bullies weren't just "bad guys", but bad guys with tragic backgrounds.

In fact, bullies become this way, because they were treated unfairly and weren't strong enough to stand their own ground. This makes them end up broken and causes them to bully others in first place.

They bully, because they envy others for their inner strength or their loving friends and families.

When I learned about this, I felt bad for the bullies I hated so much in the past.

It was strange, but they couldn't deal with the sudden change when I treated them with kindness instead of ignoring them as best as I could.

They left me and my friends alone at some point, but they never seemed to understand what was going on.

In fact, the bullies I met in the past seem still rather confused years later and could never cope with my kindness.

Then, when I got to high school, I got a few new friends and the teens weren't bullying each other that much any more.

Weirdly, we were now being picked on by teachers.

They just couldn't accept young people having their own minds and thoughts.

Especially as a young woman learning IT related topics, I noted something especially shocking.

In our IT class, we started out as four young women along many young men, but as the years went on, the teachers bullied one woman after another out of the IT class until I was the only woman left in it.

The teachers bullied us by making fun of our work, giving us bad marks for no reason other than being disrespectful towards their students or sometimes even ignored our work.

One time, we were visited by a news paper club from an university and programmed 3D printers. This was back when 3D printers had just recently been discovered and almost no one knew how they worked.

I thought about video games and polygons and came up with the idea of using my knowledge for our project. The team I was working in consisted of me and two guys. One of them was a good friend.

So I told them about my idea and we built a fully functioning 3D printer, that printed little models of dices with number dots printed into them.

We were over enjoyed and the news paper club interviewed us.

They even asked me and were curious due to me being the only woman in class.

Then, they made photographs of us and our work results and soon enough, a print came out, mentioning our 3D printer success on the front page.

But it mainly mentioned our teacher's success and even showed a member from another team, that didn't manage to get their printer out of concept stage.

It also completely ignored the success of our team and didn't even mention me or the others!

It's especially weird, that it mentioned our teacher being successful and great, when all they did was showing up with a coffee cup sometimes and not giving us any input for our project other than asking us to present our work when the news paper club showed up for the interview.

I felt betrayed and so did the others.

Nonetheless, time went on.

The bullying from the teachers didn't stop, though, as even the principal joined in and they gave not only me, but also some of the guys bad grades again despite all of our hard work!

I left school and went onwards to take a practice year at a leading IT company.

IT company
My dad was working at a leading IT company and he said, that due to my IT knowledge, I might apply for a job there as well.

It took me hundreds of job appliances until I finally got a job.

Amusingly, I ended up at the IT company where my dad was working at the time, so we were able to drive their together.

It was an awesome year!

I met many new and kind hearted people and was welcomed in a way, I had never seen before!

Finally, I was at a place where my hard work was being respected.

At the end of the year, I was sad, that I had to go.

While I would never forget about all the kind hearted people, I met, life would continue on its path and I would have to start applying for a job once again.

So I started applying again and after another few hundreds of job appliances I finally got a job again.

And, to my great surprise, it was the IT company I had been before!

I would see my friends and colleagues once again!

I started my training and kept working.

As I ended up in a different department than the one I was previously in, I met new people, but I also had to start from nothing.

So, after working hard for two years, I was a respected member of the team and even became the team leader!

The people were so kind and the customers were often happy when they heard that I would be coming to help them out with their IT issues.

I even ended up visiting my old school sometimes, but despite expecting the mean teachers and mean principal, something was really weird.

I only saw them a few times and soon enough I read something in the newspaper.

The principal and the teachers had been thrown out of business by their higher ups, but no one ever mentioned why they had to leave!

It was as if their bad Karma had summed up and struck them for being mean to their students all of the time!

The school got a new principal and new teachers and I got different teachers for the practical IT lessons. They were kind and we got along well.

No more stundents and workers were bullied by their teachers anymore!

Soon, there were the final exams and after applying again...

I couldn't stay in the IT company.

The higher ups decided, that they wanted to get rid of the young and old workers to save money. Then they kept whining about not having any qualified IT personnel.

The new IT company
Nonetheless, I kept applying and after another hundred applyances, I ended up in another IT company and I was promoted!

Now, I was the Head of the IT Department, but I still had to prove my worth to my new coworkers. So I kept working hard and had barely any time for private activities like working on the wikis or DeviantArt anymore.

We got along pretty well and at the beginning of 2018, I was promoted once again.

I still kept my title of being the Head of the IT Department, but now I am roaming around and visiting other locations.

This also means, I have way more time than I used to once again!

All in all, I am now more active at the wikis or DeviantArt again, even if I have to work on many documentations and presentation for the customers and my colleagues.

Life is tough
So, in the end, I was working hard from the beginning and I faced many struggles.

In fact, I didn't even mention the loss of people close to me.

Back when I was a child, I lost many relatives due to illnesses and old age. In my teens, I lost some as well and even lost a few friends that were about my age.

Back in 2008, I was pretty active in the Spore community and some of my friends died due to illnesses, car crashes and even wars in their home countries!

I dearly hope, this won't happen to anyone else, but all I can do is hope...

But despite all these sad things, I am very happy, that I found my place in the Spore community back in the day, then later found a new place over at the wikis and over at DeviantArt.

I deeply care about all of my friends and I know that having a good outlook on life isn't always a given.

The most important part is to never give up hope and never stop fighting, even if you are facing the darkest times.

So, please be okay everyone out there!

''Greetings Semerone''